Extraordinary service for an extraordinary local business.
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Superior SEO Strategy provides a powerhouse of skill sets that are unmatched in the marketing world.
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So What Is SEO Anyways?

SEO DEFINITION

What is SEO and learn the meaning and how to use it effectively in 2018 and beyond. “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) refers to techniques that help you achieve better rankings for your website in organic search results.

Search Engine Optimization is all about making your website more visible to people who are using search engines to look for your product, brand, or services.

SEO is part of the general area of search engine marketing (SEM), which groups all marketing strategies related to searching processes. SEM is part of online marketing and covers both paid and organic search queries. All the measures that involve you paying to place ads in search engines are grouped together under SEA (search engine advertising). So, the SEM area is made up of both SEA and SEO.

SEA measures involve you paying for your website to be listed in the display area of a search engine when particular search queries or phrases are entered. Organic and paid listings both appear on the search results page. However, they appear at different positions on the results page. Paid text ads are also marked as such.

Search Engine Optimization

Why is it so important that your website is listed on search engines?

Each year more than 2.8 trillion search queries are made on Google alone. This means that Google answers more than 88,700 searches worldwide per second.i In other words: Every second that your website is not indexed on Google, you miss out on hundreds, if not thousands, of opportunities in which someone might have accessed your website, viewed your content, and bought your product or services.

By optimizing your website for search engines, not only can you improve its ranking, and thus be found by potential customers, but you can also create a better user experience. That is the key to SEO: you are optimizing for your visitors, not just for search engines.

Good SEO is long-term and follows guidelines.

Checkout Bing Webmaster Tools:

Checkout Google Webmaster Tools:

SEO BEST PRACTICES

Successful search engine optimization does not consist of short-term actions to achieve good rankings rapidly. Rather, SEO is a constant process, in which you are continually changing your website.

These changes are important because search engines are always upgrading and changing their criteria for good rankings. So, as the webmaster, you should always be aiming to give users and search engines the best possible result for every relevant search query.

You will satisfy users’ needs by providing unique content and a website that works well on any device.
SEO measures will help you to achieve this goal. To achieve and maintain good placements on result pages (SERPs) over the long term, you should follow the search engine’s guidelines and focus on your target visitors (this approach is called “White Hat SEO”). Google and other search engines very quickly identify non-permitted, manipulative techniques and your website could be penalized.

Such penalties can cause you to drop far down in the rankings.

HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK

Search engines have one goal: to give the searcher the exact information they are searching for.

For a search engine to be able to display relevant results when a user makes a search query, there has to be an archive of available information for it to select from. This archive is called an index. Every search engine has its own methods for gathering and prioritizing content from websites.

Whatever the specific tactics or methods used, this process is known as indexing. Indeed, search engines attempt to scan and index the entire online universe. By doing so they can show you the relevant information when you search for it.

How does this work? All search engines have a program known as a “bot” or “crawler”. These programs follow links and visit websites. As they do so, they index website content and follow the links on the website to other sites. If your website has not yet been indexed, it will not appear in search results.

Major search engines like Google, Bing, Duckduckgo, and Yahoo are continually indexing billions of websites. But how do they know what they ought to show you in the SERPs when you start a search query?

HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK

There are two key things which help search engines to classify websites:

The website’s content: When they are indexing websites, the search engines’ bots scan every one of a site’s URLs and look for the starting points of the topics that are covered. They also browse the HTML code for metadata such as particular tags or markups, so that they can determine the relevance of individual pages to particular subjects.

Links to the website: While search engine bots are scanning websites for indexing purposes, they also look for links to other websites. The more high-quality inbound links the website has, the greater its link authority. In theory, every inbound link counts as a positive recommendation for a website. However, it is not the quantity of inbound links that plays the biggest role for search engines; it’s quality. For example, search engines might rate a link from a trusted website, like the New York Times (nytimes.com), as more valuable than a link from a minor, unrelated blog site. This boost from inbound links is also as known as “link juice.”

ALGORITHM

When a search query is being typed, the search engine looks in its index, even while it is being entered, for the most relevant information and displays the results in the SERPs. The results are then sorted by relevance.

When you run the same query on different search engines, you will probably get different results. This is because every search engine uses its own algorithm, based on various so-called “ranking factors.” These factors decide which results appear in the SERPs.

What is an algorithm?

Algorithm definition: A process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer.

Google uses over 900 different factors to determine the relevance of a website to a search query. Here are some important factors that the search engine algorithm takes into account when ranking a website:

The website’s content

The website’s structure and internal links

The searcher’s geographical location

Mobile optimization

Loading times

Server accessibility

Social signals (links from social networks)

With a market capitalization of USD 470 billion, Alphabet Inc. dominates the search engine market with its Google search engine.

Google.com is the market leader because the company fundamentally revolutionized the way in which search engines work. The search engine group has a market share of over 93 percent in Germany, and has held this position continuously for many years. In the United States, Google has a market share of just under 64 percent, followed by BING with over 21 percent.

In the days before Google (around 1997), search engines only indexed websites and took into account factors such as keyword density and keyword meta tags when determining the relevance of websites in relation to search queries. This approach was known as “Black Hat SEO.”

What is black hat SEO?

It involved, for example, tactics such as “keyword stuffing,” whereby websites were deliberately created with as many keywords as possible in order to achieve high rankings in the search results.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO FOR A GOOD RANKING

It’s not difficult to ensure that your website will be indexed by a search engine mainly, Google search. But it can be tricky to ensure that it is listed in association with specific keywords. Search engines look at four things when deciding ranking: rank, authority, relevance and technical issues.

RANK

The rank is the position that your website occupies in the SERPs for particular searches. Your rank is an indicator of how relevant your website is for a search term from the search engine’s perspective, and what authority it has.
It is advisable to check regularly on your website’s rank and positions in the SERPs in order to assess whether your SEO measures are having an effect.

But because there are also many factors which you cannot influence, you should not get too stressed by rankings. It is perfectly normal if your website sometimes jumps 1-5 places. But if you manage to get your site 10, 20, or 30 places higher, you should be proud of yourself.

AUTHORITY

As was described in the section “How search engines work,” search engines determine the authority and credibility of the content of a website, using such factors as the type and quality of inbound links from other websites. However, a large number of inbound links does not necessarily result in a high ranking. So, search engines also check the authority of sites that link to you, the context of the link, and which anchor text is being used. Another key factor in defining authority is the age of your domain. Older sites typically have a higher trust factor.

RELEVANCE

Relevance is one of the most important ranking factors. Search engines not only detect that you are using certain keywords, they also look for clues as to how relevant your content is to a particular search query. In addition to the actual text on your web pages, search engines also examine their structure, the use of keywords in your URLs, the formatting of the page (such as the use of bold font), and which keywords appear in the title and in the body of the text.

The work done by search engines is highly complex because, ultimately, they aim to try to think like humans.

Google is now extremely advanced and answers around 15 percent of its search queries with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). This AI is called “Rankbrain” and consists of machine learning algorithms. The fact that search engines are getting smarter has very practical consequences for SEO.

For this reason, it may seem tempting to keep changing your website content to get a better ranking on search engines. However, ultimately you will do better to put more energy into creating relevant, coherent content aimed at your target visitors (and potential customers). The better search engines become, the better quality and more unique your content should be.

LONG-TAIL CONCEPT AND THEORY

To rank highly in SERPs with your website content, you should choose the path of “least resistance.”

Even though it seems logical, initially, to strive for a ranking using high-traffic keywords and terms, this will most likely result in a lot of frustration and wasted resources. Moreover, the traffic that you will get from a highly competitive keyword, will probably be of poor quality.

There are far more unique search queries than generic ones. If you added up the search engine traffic of the most popular keywords, the number would not even come close to the amount of unique, niche keywords. This concept is known as “long-tail theory”.

Choosing the right keywords is not always easy. For example, if you sell shoes, it is likely that you would want your website to rank for the term “shoe store” (a head term). However, if you optimize several pages of your website for a particular pair of shoes, you will have far greater success ranking for the niche keyword.

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A good example would be “red tennis shoes with zippers” (a long tail keyword). Of course, the number of people searching for the long tail keyword will be fewer than those who search for “shoe store.” However, you can be pretty sure that those few people get to a far later stage in your sales funnel and are more willing to buy your product than every person that searches for the term “shoe store.”

That is why long tail keywords are so effective. They are aimed at people who want to do something or who are looking for specific information, such as a manual or a service that can solve their problem. If you optimize for long tail keywords you will reap the benefits. You will find it easy to achieve good rankings in search engines, get qualified traffic, and convert that traffic into leads and customers.

CONTENT IS KING

Everyone is familiar with the expression “content is king.” Without rich content, you will find it difficult to achieve good rankings with specific keywords and to direct traffic to your website.

If your content fails to provide your users with any added value or to engross them, it will not help to acquire leads and/or customers. It is impossible to predict how people will search for content and which keywords they will use to do so. So, it is advisable to create content that can fully satisfy the users’ needs.

It is not just about the quantity (huge amounts of text); it’s more about the relevance of the content to potential searches.

For example, think of potential questions about your offerings and try, with your content, to answer those questions as fully as is necessary and as succinctly as possible. Create unique content which appears nowhere else online. In this way, you can improve the likelihood that your website will achieve better rankings.

As you know, search engines are smart. So, if you create multiple web pages about the same subject, you are wasting your time.

You should instead focus on one web page. When creating content, there are various ways in which you can expand your online presence and improve your ranking chances without repeating yourself in the process:

Homepage: Use your website to communicate your value proposition and your general marketing messages (known as “high-level messages”). If there is one page which should be optimized for generic keywords, it is your homepage.

Product/services pages: If you are selling products/services, create a separate page for each service or product.

Knowledge base: Give your users access to a page that offers them added value and provides further information about your subjects. On this page, you can provide graphics, ebooks, and white papers, for example.

Blog: Blogging is a great way to stay up to date while easily generating new, relevant content. Blogging regularly (ideally once a week at a minimum) can have significant implications for search engine optimization, since each new blog entry represents a new web page. Practical tips: What makes good content?

Give your users genuine added value. Try to provide content that no other website has provided yet on the same subject.

Ensure that you do not optimize your text by just adding the keyword to your text as much as possible. Instead, try to base the content on the term frequency of the top 10 sites in the SERPs.

Remember that your content should be “holistic.” This means that it covers the topic in full, and includes different formats such as graphics, photos, or videos.

When you are creating text, keep in mind that web users want to get information quickly. So, express yourself in as much detail as necessary, but as succinctly as possible. For example, avoid long, nested phrases and break up your texts with short paragraphs, bullet points, headings, and images.

Structure your texts. This will enable your users to better absorb the content.

HOW TO DEVELOP AN SEO STRATEGY

If you are working out an SEO strategy, you should split it into two parts: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page SEO refers to all the measures you can take effect on your own site. These measures make it easier for search engines to find your website, index it, and understand and classify your content. Off-page SEO covers issues which are external to your website and ensure an inflow of high-quality inbound links. Let’s start with on-page SEO first.

On-page optimization is one part of search engine optimization and, as the name suggests, it covers all the measures and modifications that are made on your own website. There are several elements on your website which you can influence and which enable search engines to index your content and understand what it is about.

INDEXABILITY

If your website is to be able to achieve any rankings in SERPs, it has to be indexable. You can affect your website’s indexability, for example, using a small file called “robots.txt.” This is a text file that is stored on your server. This file stores instructions for bots which specify which areas they may crawl and which they may not. When a search engine bot visits your website, it immediately looks for this file and follows its instructions.

The robots.txt file can also specify areas where the bot is not allowed to crawl. This “ban” is applied using the word “Disallow”:

User-agent: * (all bots)

Disallow: /customerlogin

Disallow: /payments

In principle, you should not restrict the bot with too many exceptions. Search engine bots should be allowed to crawl any areas that are important for displaying the website as users can see it.

Another element you can use to manage your website indexing is the XML sitemap. This is a machine-readable list of all your website’s important URLs. You can create this list in the Google Search Console (a free Google tool for managing and monitoring your website). The XML sitemap gives Google a reference to all your website’s URLs.

URL STRUCTURE

The structure of your URLs can also help search engines to better understand your website content. If you can alter the URL so that, for example, it includes the name of your website, you should make use of this.

These are so-called “speaking URLs.”

Three tips for a good URL structure:

Use speaking URLs: By doing so, users know from the URL what is waiting for them on the landing page.

Avoid special characters in the URL: They can make it difficult for search engines to crawl.

IMAGES

In addition to the actual title bar of your site, every web page that you create has a so-called “title tag.” This is the snippet of text that appears in the top left-hand corner or in your web browser tab. The title tag is also shown as a blue link that appears in search engines when your website is listed in a SERP. Title tags have up to 70 characters, so you should choose your words wisely. The title tag is a ranking criterion for Google and other search engines. As title tags are easy to optimize, you should definitely address this issue.

Tips for using title tags:

Use the website’s central keyword in the title tag.

Be sure not to exceed the maximum length of the title tag, or it will be truncated in the SERPs.

If possible, use your brand name in the title tag, for example, your website URL.

Use a unique title tag for each web page.

TITLE TAGS & META TAGS

In addition to the actual title bar of your site, every web page that you create has a so-called “title tag.” This is the snippet of text that appears in the top left-hand corner or in your web browser tab. The title tag is also shown as a blue link that appears in search engines when your website is listed in a SERP. Title tags have up to 70 characters, so you should choose your words wisely. The title tag is a ranking criterion for Google and other search engines. As title tags are easy to optimize, you should definitely address this issue.

Tips for using title tags:

Use the website’s central keyword in the title tag.

Be sure not to exceed the maximum length of the title tag, or it will be truncated in the SERPs.

If possible, use your brand name in the title tag, for example, your website URL.

Use a unique title tag for each web page.

The “meta description,” in contrast, is a piece of text that describes what a specific page is about. Meta descriptions are typically displayed as text below the blue links in search engine results. If you have no meta description, search engines usually take a piece of text at random from the content referenced by the link. The meta description is limited to 175 characters. Tips on using meta descriptions:

End your meta description with a call to action.

Do not exceed the maximum length of 175 characters, or the description will be cut off in the SERPs.

Use a separate description for each web page.

Tips on using meta descriptions:

Keep in mind that the title and the description are usually the first elements that a new visitor to your website sees in the SERPs. So you can influence whether or not a visitor clicks on the search result with your website by optimizing the title and description.

HEADLINE TAGS

When search engine crawlers scan your website, they look for clues about the content on your pages. If you use different headline tags, you structure your website’s content and make it easier for visitors and crawlers to understand it.

INTERNAL LINKS

Previously, we have only discussed inbound links, i.e., links that lead to your site via other websites.

If you create content on your blog or specific web pages, you should also nonetheless refer to other pages within your website.

You can do this by adding a link between the pages. We recommend that you use anchor text to do this.

When you use anchor text, it suggests that the linked page is about the keyword or phrase in it. So, you can greatly increase the relevance of a web page to a particular subject or keyword. Meaningful anchor text also greatly improves user-friendliness.

Important: We recommend that you always use the same keyword to link a target page. This helps search engines to recognize that this page in your domain must be extremely relevant to a particular subject or keyword.

PERFORMANCE

Search engines also assess, in great detail, the technical aspects of your website. For example, how quickly the site loads plays a major role in your website ranking. Search engines also take into account how accessible your server is. Because, ultimately, Google and other search engines want to provide the best possible search results. So, the aim is to guide visitors to sites which work well, and which can always be accessed and used.

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A Company With Intelligent Insight

Extraordinary service for an extraordinary local business.---------------------------------Superior SEO Strategy provides a powerhouse of skill sets that are unmatched in the marketing world.A beautifully aesthetically smooth web design optimized for Google is a must but visibility is paramount.

Entrusting an agency to handle your website must be put in the hands of someone with the mindset of a surgeon and the heart of a competitor.

Get it right the first time by hiring an experienced agency that will handle your business in-house and not pass it on to an outsourcing agency. We also supply consulting services to train you or your staff, so call today.~ Keyword Research~ WordPress Website Design~ Search Engine Optimization (SEO)~ Video Creation~ Social Media~ The Most Complete Online Service